Enron admits spending $2.5m on lobbying

Enron spent three times as much on lobbying the Bush administration last year than it first admitted, it emerged today.

The disgraced US energy company now says it lavished nearly $2.5m (£1.6m) on lobbying in the first six months of the Bush administration rather than the $825,000 it reported last summer.

Enron's revised 17-page report now states that it lobbied the administration on appointments to the securities exchange commission (SEC) - the US financial watchdog - and to the commodity futures trading commission, as well as other regulatory agencies.

The old report omitted any mention of lobbying on nominees for these two key agencies. In another amendment, the revised report contains eight references to White House lobbying; the earlier version had just two.

But even this latest account may still be incomplete. Enron is still so uncertain of its accuracy that not one of the company's executives would step forward to sign the document.

Enron was among George Bush's biggest campaign contributors, and its former boss Kenneth Lay enjoyed a warm relationship with the president, who called him "Kenny Boy".

Mr Lay tried to capitalise on his close ties to the Bush team when he made a series of telephone calls to members of the cabinet asking for help when the energy conglomerate went into free fall.

Enron aggressively lobbied the administration to push its free market agenda for the energy industry. Mr Lay put forward eight names to the White House when it was making appointments to the federal energy regulatory commission (Ferc) last spring. Mr Bush eventually appointed two of the people on Enron's list.

Mr Lay gave the list of names to Clay Johnson, Mr Bush's personnel director. Among the eight or so names were Pat Wood, now Ferc chairman, and Nora Brownell, a member of the commission.

The justice department, the SEC and a dozen congressional committees are investigating Enron and its auditor, Arthur Andersen, after Enron filed for bankruptcy last December in America's most spectacular corporate failure.

The latest report on Enron's lobbying activities showed that the company spent as much on lobbying in the first six months of Mr Bush's presidency as it did in all of the previous year when lobbying came to $2.1m. The figure for all of 1999 was just under $2m.

The centre for responsive politics, a Washington group that tracks political contributions, uncovered a discrepancy a month ago that led to the revised filing.

Enron earlier reported spending only $825,000 on lobbying, but outside lobbying firms reported Enron's expenditure as coming to $1.8m during the same period.